Ender’s Game: A fictional future that the US military is terrifyingly close to realizing

[This story containers spoilers. If you haven’t read the book Ender’s Game, or you’re saving yourself for the movie, you should probably leave this page now.]

In his book Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card envisioned a not-so-distant future where intergalactic war is waged and won by child soldiers. Unlike today’s idea of child soldiers, though, where military regimes equip children with rifles and send them off to war to kill and be killed, in Ender’s Game the battles occur inside a simulator, where no physical harm can befall the kid. It doesn’t take a genius to see the parallels between this, and the US military’s move towards UAVs and combat robots that are controlled by soldiers who are hundreds or thousands of miles away from the battlefront.

These American soldiers, though, are adult; adults with free will, ethics, and the ability to critically question whether it’s right to blow up an enemy combatant with a Hellfire missile. Wouldn’t it be so much more efficient, though, if the US military instead used children to control its killer arsenal of unmanned drones and robots? Not only are children faster, but more importantly they’re not lumbered down by morals, critical thinking, and other pesky adult mental processes. If you tell a child to do something, perhaps under physical or psychological duress if you need to ensure compliance, they will do it. Or, if you’re of the sappy persuasion, the US military could just take a leaf out of Ender’s Game and trick the children into thinking that they’re playing a game instead of fighting a real war.

Technology is blind

One of the defining — and also most powerful — aspects of technology is that it’s completely impartial. The classic example is the gun: As long as you can pull the trigger, you have the technology-granted ability to easily kill other people at will. This is why guns are called equalizers. An iPad doesn’t care if you’re three or sixty years old, male or female, white or black — as long as you have the manual dexterity to use the touchscreen, every single one of the iPad’s capabilities are compelled to do your bidding.

But technology’s blindness is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the internet allows anyone to seek information and resources that can dramatically improve their quality of life — but on the other, the internet grants access to bomb-making guides and other subversive materials that might have a detrimental effect on children or other easily influenced groups of people. In some cases, because technology is so terrifyingly unprejudiced, we build safeguards to prevent such situations — but in the vast majority of cases, technology, like information, strives to be free. When safeguards are implemented, you can almost guarantee that someone somewhere has created a tool that will remove those safeguards cheaply and easily (DVD decryption, SIM unlocking, phone rooting, home-made bombs…)

Mechanized children

The military, of course, by virtue of being, almost by definition, a legalized killing machine, isn’t so fussed with safeguards. Society generally tries to impose some kind of ethical framework upon the military, so that we can sleep soundly at night, but at the very best the military only conforms to these pesky requirements when it absolutely has to. For the most part, the military acts first and does whatever it takes to keep its country safe, and asks or answers to questions later.

Which leads us neatly onto UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), and other remotely or autonomously controlled weapons of death, such as robot soldiers. In recent years there has been a massive push by military and law enforcement towards unmanned weapons of war and surveillance. At their most simple, these UAVs are just surveillance drones that can provide valuable intelligence that might be hard (read: dangerous) to obtain with a human-piloted vehicle. UAVs can also be outfitted with weaponry, if blowing up enemy combatants is more your kind of thing.

NASA’s UAV ground control station (GCS)

UAVs can be autonomous, or they can be controlled by soldiers on the ground. In the case of the US military, these soldiers are usually situated at some kind of forward base, where they use a a ground control station and the Common Data Link wireless protocol to remotely control the UAV. The ground control station (GCS), as you see above, is essentially the cockpit of the aircraft, but with less knobs and more screens. Ultimately, control of the UAV comes down to the soldier’s joystick and keyboard inputs.

As we all know, children are more than capable of watching a video feed, assimilating the displayed information, and reacting by controlling a joystick or hitting some buttons. I have just described a video game — and, in essence, that’s exactly what the UAV’s ground control station is, or the simulator that Ender uses in Ender’s Game. There is no technical reason that a child couldn’t use the GCS to blow up the enemies of the USA.

DARPA’s Atlas robot

There’s also no reason that the GCS is limited to just UAVs. Over the last few years, DARPA and contractors like Boston Dynamics have clearly been working towards a robot army. There’s the BigDog mule, the WildCat fast attack squad, and of course the real-world Terminator, Atlas. For now, only BigDog is close to military deployment (carrying supplies for human soldiers), but it’s really only a matter of time until the US military fields an all-robot army.

This army, unless it’s autonomous (which is unlikely), will be controlled by hundreds of soldiers sitting in front of computers — in fact, it’ll probably look a bit like an internet cafe or LAN party. For the soldiers, war will be a lot like a video game… and kids are really good at video games.

A large LAN party in the UK (with me in the middle)

Worryingly, it makes a lot of sense to have children control the US army of the future. They have faster reactions than adults, and they’re generally capable of learning new skills and tasks more quickly. Most importantly, children aren’t fully psychologically developed, and so they generally lack some of the more complex mental processes, such as ethics and critical thought. Whereas Private Smith might question whether it’s the right thing to put a bullet between the eyes of an unidentified target, it is relatively easy to get a child to wield a robotic weapon of death without flinching.

Even more terrifyingly, the US military of the future might not even tell their children soldiers that they’re remotely controlling robots on a battlefield. Instead, the US military could create a glorified Call of Duty clone where — unbeknownst to the child — the first-person view is actually being transmitted in real time from a battlefield robot, and the on-screen enemies are avatars of real-world terrorists. As we know all too well, children wouldn’t think twice about mowing down hundreds of enemy soldiers in such a setup.

As I wrote this story, I experienced an odd sensation: Growing dread. I’ve written a lot of stories about the future of technology, but this one had a much larger affect on me than usual. I think it’s because, for once, I’m writing about a not-so-distant future that can, and probably will, happen. We’re not talking about realistic android prostitutes or space elevators that rely on technology that hasn’t been invented yet: The US military could field a battalion of child-controlled killer robots today.

Tagged In

I want to see the movie but I still read the article. He only talked about the movie in generalities, did not go into any specific plot details. He revealed no more than a simple synopsis you could find on rotten tomatoes or anyone movie website, which I usually read before going to see a movie anyway so I have an idea what its about. Interesting article…brings up some scary ideas.

John

No surprise. The only nation to have used an atomic bomb, and regularly massacres children and uses chemical weapons on innocents, will not hesitate to employ any means necessary to keep their war economy going.

DemiserofD

Ultimately, war is becoming pure economy. It used to be about heroism and glory, but I feel like as things get more and more mechanized, ultimately it will just be legions of robots fighting other robots until the economy of one side cant sustain it any longer.

Choking Kojak

Yeah, I’ll go toe-to-toe with any Ender-aged runt any day of the week in an online FPS. And I — an old man — will “dunk” on said Enders without breaking a sweat…

IMHO, “Enders” are overrated.

Osymandias

How about parents of those kids and more importantly, how about media?

RedRainbowsAndPurpleUnicorns

Is he saying they are going to use kids for war? O.o

madjr

why use kids and not just AI , if you’re that far into the future..

Bp911

Right, because so many militaries have problems with solders refusing orders right? History is choke full of solders and armies doing terrible terrible things and its unlikely to change. No need to dupe children into controlling robots when so many adults would do it gleefully for a simple paycheck.

Patrick James Bayham

lol…one EMP and the whole army goes down!

DemiserofD

EMP-proofing isn’t hard.

Patrick James Bayham

nor is believing in fairies…

DemiserofD

Wat.

Jim Willis

why not? The white house and congress are full of children..

Tim

I find this scenario highly unrealistic. Soldiers need patience and the ability to wait and do nothing (and yet still stay awake, sometimes for days on end) far more than they need reflexes that are perhaps a few milliseconds better than those of adults a few years older than them.

I also find it discouraging to see that the author of this article and most of the commentors below are so far removed from a military way of life that they think the US defense department would do something like this. We adhere to the Geneva Conventions. We’re not a bunch of murderous psychopaths. Leave the war crimes to the banana dictatorships and Islamic jihadis.

If you have a problem with the US military, why don’t you join up and improve it with your incomparably selfless moral character rather than bash those who have already done so?

Mhairi McAlpine

You dont adhere to the Geneva Conventions and the US military is a bunch of murderous psychopaths, waging your jihad on Muslims and imposing dictatorships to get cheap bananas.

Tim

Whatever, Muslims have been waging real jihad against everybody ever since their murderous, illiterate, narcissistic pederast founder started that fake religion. And we most certainly do adhere to the Geneva conventions, as opposed to jihadists, who turn mosques into bomb-making factories and use children to conduct suicide bombing attacks.

Mhairi McAlpine

Guantanamo, Abu Garab, Naga-fucking-saki?

Tim

Let’s see, Islamic war crimes: Banu Qurayza in 627, Abd Al Malik crucifixions in 700-720, Al Hakim persecutions in 1003, crucifixion of Joseph Hanaid in Granada and slaughter of all Jews there in 1066, Atsiz bin Awaq slaughters Jerusalem in 1077, Jews in Yemen, Morocco, and Baghdad forcibly converted between 1165-1333; all but 11 Jews in Fez are slaughtered in 1465, Ali Burzi Pasha attempts to purge Libya of Jews in 1785, Muslims massacre Jews in Algiers between 1805-1830, First Armenian genocide of 200,000 in Turkey in 1894, second Armenian genocide of 800,000 in Turkey in 1915, Holocaust in Germany, where Hitler got the assistance of Muhammad Amin al Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, to kill 6 million Jews, 9/11, 3/11, 7/7…need I go on? There are plenty more. I didn’t even mention the genocide against the Hindus in the East that killed over 200 million during that 1,400 year time frame.

Guantanamo bay is full of prisoners of war, they’re cared for within the norms of the Geneva convention. Abu Ghraib was a few Muslim prisoners (i.e. terrorists caught in the act) getting humiliated, Nagasaki was part of a full-scale war where the emperor Hirohito had ordered all Japanese citizens to take up arms and fight. That means they were all targets. Ending that war with two nukes was far less costly in lives than a full-scale invasion would have been.

Michele Cavallini

The game it’s already there XD http://www.americasarmy.com/ official US army game :P If they do something like this… they need a real big quantity of mech soldier :P U know.. when u are safe behind a display.. it’s easyer to jump in “rambo-style”.. instead a soldier (or the one commanding a ManyMillionDollarsUAV) should think twice :P

gunnergoz

AFAIC, of all the things that might come true that we need to really be concerned might actually happen, this one is waaaay down on the bottom of my Worry List. Unless we see a future with 2 or three consecutive Republican presidents happening…then, all bets are off.

DemiserofD

Child soldiers might be unlikely, but a fully robotic military is almost inevitable. It currently costs 850k/year to keep a soldier in afghanistan, a well built robot could do the same as that soldier, and never need physical training, or a salary, or danger pay, or medals. Plus, it couldn’t be taken captive, and if one gets ‘killed’ you just build another.

TheOtherTurnipTaliban

“These American soldiers, though, are adult; adults with free will, ethics, and the ability to critically question whether it’s right to blow up an enemy combatant with a Hellfire missile.” HAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHA. Excuse me.

RedRainbowsAndPurpleUnicorns

>.< ENDERS GAME IS SO FLIPPIN AWESOME I THINK I'LL DIE FROM THE AWESOMENESS YA'LL <3 UPVOTE IF YOU THINK MILEY CYRUS IS AMAZEBALLS DOWNVOTE IF YOU THINK JUSTIN BIEBER IS AMAZING (WHICH HE'S NOT BUT WHATEVER) TEEHEE {BYE YA'LL}

Guest

anu

bxdanny

The notion that children “are not lumbered down by morals, critical thinking, and other pesky adult mental processes” is just not so. Children acquire a basic sense of right and wrong very early, regardless of what many adults may think. But yes, they will play “killing games” if they think they are just games. Luckily, I see no practical way that a game in which “the first-person view is actually being transmitted in real time from a battlefield robot, and the on-screen enemies are avatars of real-world terrorists” could actually be delivered to children.

OrangeKing89

While the ideas in the article are rather worrying there is one significant detail that was available in Ender’s Game that we don’t have: the ansible.

I don’t really think any child would put up with that kind of Lag in a shooter game.

Computer games right now do a lot of educated guessing about what should be happening to the various players that gets corrected by the server or by the computers as a group as they diverge.

Reality could not be corrected to agree as easily as a simulation.

Ender

what does this have to do with ender’s game i swear i am tired that when i search iup something it is so wrong

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